JIM HOOPER

After retiring from a career in Boston's commercial real estate business, I enrolled in a professional "trade school" photography program that was then part of Boston University. After graduating, I stayed on staff for another year working as a TA. The instructors in our program were a variety of talented working professional photographers with different specialties, and the students were a mixed group of high school grads, mid-career changers, and recently retired people. It was an extremely colorful and highly creative group of characters, and my two years at CDIA rank among my life's favorite chapters... To one degree or another, most successful portraits seem to reflect the interaction between the person standing in front of the camera and the person holding it. My work in commercial real estate was always focused on the "people side" of the business, so it was not a huge surprise to my friends when I became drawn to portraiture... Over the past 7 years, I have worked on a number..